Contributed by Rep. David Eastman
We don’t hear the term “self-government” much these days. An Alaskan hearing the phrase “self-government” for the first time today might even think that it refers to the way that our state government seemingly runs itself today - no public input needed, or desired for that matter.
When the legislature wants to stay in session past the 90-day limit in state law, it just does. When the governor, the legislature and the courts want to ignore the state law that calculates the value of the PFD, they just do. When our courts want to, say, expand state-funded abortions to include funding prohibited by state law, they simply do. If a part of government wants to do a particular thing, more and more, even if the people oppose it, those in government just do it anyway, hoping the people will eventually forget about it, go away, and let government govern itself.
This year provided us a great example. When our governor and legislators discovered that they were constitutionally prohibited from selling a billion dollars in state bonds without a vote of the people, they decided to create a new agency to do the very thing that they themselves were constitutionally forbidden from doing. The governor’s attorney general explained to legislators that it’s okay to ignore the constitutional prohibitions against new state debt because officially they aren’t planning to refer to the state bonds as state debt. There. Problem solved.
Only, the problem isn’t solved. If the people of Alaska let these events slide, each event has the ability to take us further and further away from the idea of self-government; the self-government that is our constitutionally guaranteed birthright as Alaskans and as Americans.
Recently, the nation was transfixed on the idea of a new Supreme Court Justice and how that person will rule. What has received less attention is the fact that we have seven Alaska Superior Court Judges and eight Alaska District Court Judges that will be on the ballot in this year’s election.
You can’t vote on whether or not someone will be on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, you can vote on whether someone will continue to serve as a judge in our state courts.
Fifteen judges, 12 men and 3 women, need your vote this year to serve as a judge here in Alaska. One candidate has been an Alaska judge for more than 30 years and is asking for another 6-year term. Will you give it to him? Have these judges acted on behalf of the people of Alaska, or have they provided excuses for legislators, governors and other judges to ignore the law?
You can leave the decision to the professionals of course. In fact, they would prefer it if you did.
But if you desire to have a voice, and you desire for your children and other members of the next generation to have that same voice, then please join us at www.alaskajudiciary.com, a project of Alaska Conservative Leadership. We have made it our mission to gather information about the 15 judges Alaskans will be voting on this year, and to offer recommendations on whether or not each of these judges are worthy of serving for another term.
In the end, we only have two choices: 1) We can let judges judge themselves, or 2) we can come together to take a look at each judge’s record and decide for ourselves whether that record is worthy of our vote.
If you are expecting legislators to do that work for you, think again. Some legislators have already decided that examining the records of judges isn’t worth the effort. In the immortal words of Rep. Andy Josephson speaking on the floor of the Alaska State House (April 12, 2017): “So, literally, when the Supreme Court jumps, my only response can be ‘How high?’”
That’s one approach.
The other is to gather information on Alaska’s judges and determine, case by case, whether they have done right by the people with the authority that the people entrusted them with.
We will be posting the list of all 15 judges Alaskans will be voting on. If you have information on any of these judges, positive, negative or otherwise, please let us know at www.alaskajudiciary.com, and please support our efforts to get this information out to the voters on Election Day.
Rep. David Eastman has served in the Alaska State House representing the Mat-Su since 2017. He ran on a platform of fighting for genuine conservative reform, fiscally and socially, and remains committed to delivering on that promise.